Month: August 2018

Share to facebook Share to twitter Share to linkedin Drought conditions across the United States as of August 28, 2018.Dennis Mersereau Downpours this summer have felt like a zero-sum game. If someone’s getting a deluge, someone else in another part of the country is going another day without a drop of much-needed rainfall. Drought conditions

A colourised topographic map of Olympus Mons and its surroundings.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Mount Olympus, the highest peak in Greece, is 2,918 meters (9,573 feet) high – and was once thought to be home to some rather petulant gods. Compared to the Martian mountain that shares its name, though, Zeus’ terrestrial palace is a pipsqueak. In fact,

HEIDELBERG, Germany (Reuters) – Armed with a mouse and computer screen instead of a scalpel and operating theater, cardiologist Benjamin Meder carefully places the electrodes of a pacemaker in a beating, digital heart. A three-dimensional printout of a human heart is seen at the Heidelberg University Hospital (Universitaetsklinikum Heidelberg) in Heidelberg, Germany, August 14, 2018.

It has its directive: seek and destroy. And the underwater drone RangerBot is ready to put its lethal skills to work on Australia’s horrifically threatened Great Barrier Reef. But it’s not the coral that’s the target of its deadly focus. RangerBot is more like a bodyguard, trying to protect the reef from one of its

Past experiments using CERN’s super-sized particle-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), hinted at something unexpected. A particle called a beauty meson was breaking down in ways that just weren’t line up with predictions. That means one of two things – our predictions are wrong, or the numbers are out. And a new approach makes it

First, New Zealand declared war on dirty-clawed predators – stoats, rats, weasels – and there was little to be missed. But as the fight comes to the kitties, some owners are paws-sitively outraged. New Zealand’s efforts to protect its most rarefied creatures are turning to a measure that has rattled many cat owners: banning feline

Social media went nuts on Wednesday night over a line of bright lights that appeared briefly in the sky over San Diego before vanishing. Reports came from far and wide, with shaky footage uploaded to Youtube and blurry pics shared across Twitter giving us plenty of images, but little information to go on. What are

In July of 2015, NASA’s New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto. Since that time, the spacecraft’s mission was extended so it could make its way farther into the outer Solar System and become the first spacecraft to explore some Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). It’s

The small, tropical fish known as a cleaner wrasse has just joined the ranks of various mammals and birds that have passed a classic test for determining self-awareness. An international team of researchers have found the finger-sized wrasse are capable of recognising their reflection, suggesting some part of their brain must be aware of its

Saturn has been out there getting up to its old tricks again: looking really spectacular and being super interesting. This time, it’s in a series of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the planet’s breathtaking auroras. Over a period of seven months in 2017, the space-based telescope used its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

It started with a late-night cough. “He was otherwise fine, but … something was weird and different,” said Verai Ramsammy, who was worried about her miniature schnauzer, Louie. She was a meticulous dog person, the kind who bought special food for her pets. She made a veterinary appointment just to be safe. Within months, Ramsammy’s

The International Space Station (ISS) is amazing. Floating 408 kilometres (254 miles) above us, astronauts get to do science experiments, and take great photos of Earth spinning beneath them. But it’s also tiny, a terrible place to poop, and occationally it springs leaks. On Wednesday at 23:00 UTC (19:00 EDT), flight controllers began to notice

Hilleman helped develop vaccines against several strains of the flu during his 40-year career in vaccine research. Jonas Salk gained worldwide fame for his polio vaccine; Louis Pasteur is remembered, among other things, for developing a vaccine against rabies, and Edward Jenner’s name is forever connected to vaccination against smallpox. But history barely remembers the

A model of Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius battery pack is displayed at Panasonic EV Energy Co.’s Omori plant in Kosei, central Japan, Friday, June 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi) Co-authors Austin Brown & Dan Sperling EV challenges remain but battery life is not one of them. There are lots of great reasons to drive electric. The modern

For the first time, scientists have figured out how to accelerate electrons using protons passing through plasma. That’s a big deal, because it could lead to much smaller and cheaper particle accelerators than the ones we currently rely on. Right now, if you want to install a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator in your

Dwindling U.K. interest in coal-fired power generation, once the country’s mainstay, has long been known. Reflective of that profound change in thinking is London-listed midcap utility outfit Drax Group (LON:DRX) and its Chief Executive Officer Will Gardiner. Upon entering Gardiner’s office for an interview, the executive who was formerly the group’s finance chief, welcomes your

Black holes are famous for tearing apart and devouring stars. But new simulations suggest that, in the very final moments, black holes can actually bring stars back to life. But only certain stars, in certain conditions – and the perfect storm involved could help solve a perplexing black hole mystery. So, how is this possible?

The Arctic is not in a good way. Its oldest, thickest sea ice is breaking. Strange lakes punctuate its landscape. The very chemistry of its water is changing. Things could be about to get worse. New research has uncovered evidence of a vast reservoir of heated water building up underneath the Arctic Ocean and penetrating

Archaeologists in Mexico have unearthed a rare treasure. A life-sized stucco mask recovered from the Palenque Palace is thought to represent one of Mesoamerica’s most important and beloved kings, K’inich Janaab’ Pakal. Also known as Pakal the Great, his reign is the longest in the history of the Americas. He ascended the throne at age

What’s up with the Sun? As we’ve said previous, what the Sun isn’t doing is the big news of 2018 in solar astronomy. Now, the Sun sent us another curveball this past weekend, with the strange tale of growing sunspot AR 2720. We’re currently headed towards a solar minimum, forecasted to arrive in 2019 as